Mutual Toner
by Vsquared-k
Summary: Beca/Chloe fic: Chloe has a huge toner for Beca, Beca has a huge toner for Chloe. Both are oblivious of the other's metaphorical appendage, but decide to seek assistance from other Bellas in wooing the girl.
1. Chloe I

_**A/N:** I'm back! Nobody missed me? That's cool. Based off of a prompt I received from luxraygun on tumblar._

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Chloe was getting tired of the sidelong glances. Of watching, seeing... and never reaching for the one thing she really wanted. Granted, her watching wasn't very... subtle, judging from her outright ogling during Bellas practice. Nor was her ability to hide the toner she had for a certain petite brunette (with a delectably rebellious ear spike, multiple tattoos, and a penchant for sarcastic smirks) particularly existent. But she tried! She wasn't someone who was very good at hiding things, since the secret of her nodes, which she had promised never to tell Aubrey about, lasted less than half a day.

But then again, how often did cute alternative girls sing her lady jam? And in the shower, no less! It wasn't her fault! The acoustics in the showers are horrid, what with the echoing and the dripping and the shower curtains and... but they still managed to sound absolutely stunning together, and it really couldn't be helped when she'd been incredibly turned on by the end of _that_.

And it wasn't her fault she'd been found out! She had been in the middle of a very intense lady jam time shortly after the initiation, and hadn't noticed Aubrey walk into their shared room. Aubrey, who was very used to this kind of thing (because she was very used to Chloe, having been best friends and roommates for years), had just sat down at her desk to start on her readings. Aubrey, who usually just ignored her if she ever accidentally saw this kind of thing... which was often, had been about to put her own headphones on to block out Chloe's quiet moans. Aubrey, who wouldn't and couldn't let her live down the fact that Beca's beautiful name had fallen, reverently, from her lips in the height of her ecstasy, had heard her as the climax of the song had ripped through her body. It hadn't been her fault at all.

Aubrey had immediately run over and ripped her headphones from her ears, with a sort of deranged gleam in her eyes. And while the tinny sounding ending bars of Titanium could be heard from her crappy gel earbuds on her mattress, Chloe had just stared at Aubrey as Aubrey's mouth had worked its way into a weird devilish smirk. Chloe's face had slowly turned bright red as she realized just what had happened ("So that's what blushing feels like," Chloe had thought), and she had prayed for the powers that be to strike her down where she lay. She had waited for Aubrey to say something, but Aubrey just smirked at her, staring down at her half-naked self. And when Aubrey had opened her mouth to say the one thing that Chloe hadn't really wanted her to know, Chloe finally lowered her gaze.

"You have a toner for Beca!"

That had been that. Her secret had flown out of the cage, because the cages she had for secrets were shoddily built, since she had no practice in doing anything like that. And every day, when she saw Aubrey in their room, Aubrey would just smirk at her. She knew she could trust the blonde to keep her secret, but that didn't mean that, when they were alone, Aubrey didn't constantly pester her about it.

\o/

"Are you going to do anything about it?"

It was several weeks before regionals, and as she usually did, Chloe tried to play it off. "About what?" She sighed and put her pen in the textbook, closing it to mark her place, before turning to face Aubrey, who was sitting on her bed, books splayed around her and notepad in her lap. She'd have to read this passage later, every time Aubrey started talking about Beca, she lost her train of thought.

"Your toner for the girl with the horrible fashion sense?"

"She doesn't have horrible fashion sense, you harpie!" Chloe pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at her roommate, knowing, from the evil grin that was spreading across Aubrey's face, that she had just walked into her trap. "She's perfect the way she is." Chloe rolled her eyes at the Aubrey's mocking "awwwww" and continued. "If I'm going to do anything about it, I promise that you'll be the first person I consult."

Aubrey's eyes gleamed. "Good." She nodded emphatically. "You know I've got your back, like you've got mine."

\o/

Chloe really didn't know, because the very next morning, after practice, Aubrey was confronting Beca about her toner for Jesse (again), and glancing over at Chloe with a look that only the girl in question would be able to notice. Beca walked away, eyes unflinchingly hard with barely suppressed annoyance, this being the tenth time that Aubrey had questioned her on this. The first time the confrontation had happened, prior to Chloe divulging her deepest, darkest secret to the world, Chloe's heart had fluttered at Beca's admission to her and Jesse's relationship being "not like that", but, in the weeks following, everything she saw while wandering the quad (not that she would ever wander the quad to catch glimpses of Beca... of course not!) suggested otherwise. At this point, just hearing about Jesse caused her heart to sink more than it really had to.

This time, however, was a little different than the last nine times.

"Prove it, then, Beca." Beca stopped right beside Chloe, nose flaring. "Prove it to me and the rest of your Bella sisters." Some of the other girls had lingered, curious about the latest clash between freshman and senior Bella.

Beca glanced over at Chloe, who grimaced apologetically. Aubrey was doing this for her. Aubrey was doing this for her...

Aubrey was doing a horrible job of doing this for her.

Beca looked quizzically over at her, before rolling her eyes.

Jaw set, Beca whirled around to face her captain. "There's nothing to prove! Nothing's happening! Maybe if you put as much effort into modernizing the setlist as you do meddling in my non-existent love life, we'd have a better chance against the Treblemakers!" Beca threw her hands up in the air in disgust before racing out the door with her bag, oblivious of the bright blue eyes that followed her out.

The rest of the girls eventually left for their morning classes, leaving Chloe and Aubrey alone in the silent auditorium, save for the shuffling of pages and the occasional sniffle.

"Aubrey?" Chloe slowly walked over to the sniffling blonde. "Are you okay?"

The blonde whirled around and launched herself at her best friend. "I'm not helping at all!" Chloe wrapped her arms around the wailing girl, and sat down on the closest chair, cradling the blonde, before running her fingers through Aubrey's hair, knowing that this was one of the rare ways to calm Aubrey down.

"It's okay, you know. You don't have to try..." Chloe smiled down at her. "I'm pretty content just watching her."

Sniffling, Aubrey looked up at the ginger. "I just want to help you be happy!" Chloe's smile grew. She really had the best friend in the world, even if Aubrey didn't always have the best way of showing it.

"I _am_ happy! I have you, and the Bellas, and Beca came to auditions, and it's okay!" Chloe sighed. "It really is." She nodded, as if to convince herself.

Taking a deep breath, a teary-eyed Aubrey silently decided that they needed a new plan.

_TBC_

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_**Notes: **My apologies for disappearing for upwards of a year. Anyway, other fics are still being worked on (really slowly. really... really slowly. blame the IRLs.), so maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to squeeze another fic update into the works before the next century. This one here is honestly my attempt to work the rust off of my writing chops, not that I had writing chops in the first place, amirite? ha. Anyway, next chapter of this is Beca's POV._


	2. Beca I

_**Notes:**__ Updateeeeeeee! Beca's POV. Do not own, yada yada_

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Beca didn't know what to make of it. There was this magnificently radiant redhead that had done the public-shower-stall equivalent of breaking and entering, and then she'd forced them to sing together. Naked. And the whole time Beca had been singing with Chloe, she just hadn't been able to keep her eyes on those unmistakably intense blue eyes that were staring at her...

Chloe's lips, her hair, her voice, her... assets. They lingered in every single moment of Beca's waking life until the auditions, and haunted her dreams much longer after that. Initiation, while creepy as hell, hadn't been as bad as she had made it out to be, because she couldn't keep her eyes off of the captivating ginger. The party later had been no better, what with Chloe getting way up in Beca's space and breathing on her. After Chloe left, Beca's hands still tingled from the other girl's touch, and she had only been able to croak out some strange semblance of a pleasantry. Less than an hour later, Chloe was tickling some random guy's uvula with her tongue, and Beca had seen fit to leave for the night.

She needed the fiery songstress off of her mind. It didn't help that she still couldn't get that damned David Guetta song out of her head. She'd even made a remix, which usually worked for earworms... but now she was on Titanium Remix 7.0... nothing seemed to drive that melody from her mind.

The only time she could ever really get away from Titanium, bright blue eyes and flowing red hair, was when she was being pestered by Jesse in the music archives or on the Quad. At this point, any reprieve was good reprieve... she was honestly getting no sleep, and Kimmy Jin could attest to that. So she spent as much of her free time as she could with Jesse, immersing herself in sorting music, watching lame movies, and making mixes as if these were the only things that could keep her afloat.

Maybe they were.

The worst part of it was that seeing Chloe every morning was making her insane. For some strange reason, Chloe kept going out of her way to touch her, be it in guiding her through the choreography or grabbing her arm to prevent her from ripping Aubrey in half, and it was honestly making her skittish. Beca didn't do touching, but she didn't know how to tell the other woman to stop. No one had ever really needed to be told to stop before, usually a glare would suffice, so Beca was a little out of her element. For some strange reason, it was surprisingly difficult to breathe normally when Chloe would merely accidentally graze her arm, so when Chloe purposefully touched her, it took all of Beca's focus to not sputter, hyperventilate, or blush.

Beca was absolutely mortified by this development. She had no idea what this meant, and needed this to stop, and fast.

\o/

When three weeks passed, and there was no relief in sight (in fact it was worse, because Aubrey wouldn't get off her case about Jesse), Beca started thinking about who she could (maybe, possibly) ask for assistance with her... Chloe problem. Beca did feelings about as well as she did touching, and she figured someone would be able to help her sort everything out. Her list of people she could ask about this was dwindling, however, and that was a decidedly bad thing.

Fat Amy was an absolute no, because there was a higher likelihood of Amy making it more confusing than actually helping. Aubrey and Stacie were also definite no's, for obvious reasons. She didn't want to bring Jesse into this equation, because she needed him as a reprieve, not some sounding board. Kimmy Jin was more likely to ignore her than she was to help her. She didn't want to wimp out to Luke or her dad either, because there were some things that people like them just weren't meant to know. Lilly didn't talk, and she didn't know Jessica, Denise or Ashley well enough to ask for their opinions.

As luck would have it, Cynthia Rose was in her Philosophy class, and they sometimes studied together (in a comfortable silence). If Beca was into making friends, she'd say that the two of them would get along well since they were both pretty hard-core people, but since she wasn't, she never really did much more than ask what exactly Descartes meant with his thinking and being shit (_cogito ergo sum_ was pretty cool, though, and Beca made a mental note to look into getting that tattooed under her left collarbone).

She was still contemplating who she could ask when Cynthia Rose broached the subject herself.

"Girl, you okay?" Beca scrunched her brow together and looked down at the other girl, who was sitting on the floor by her bed. "You're workin' your lip there somethin' fierce."

"I don't know what you mean." Beca propped herself up on her mattress and reached for the lip chap she had conveniently placed on the edge of her desk.

"That there's a tell, you know, there's some sorta trouble. My girl used to do that all the time, before..." Cynthia Rose trailed off and shrugged with a sad smile, "If you wanna talk, just let me know, ok? I got your back."

Beca nodded, giving Cynthia Rose a tight smile in thanks, before looking back down to her textbook. "So... Explain this Aristotlean Ethics system thing to me again?"

Cynthia Rose just rolled her eyes, allowing the other woman the out. They would talk in time, she was sure.

In fact, she'd bet on it.

\o/

The night of the Riff Off, Beca had been flabbergasted. The team sounded amazing! Why hadn't this happened during practice? Why didn't they mesh this well in rehearsal? If this was what a capella was really like, then maybe, just maybe, Beca would be able to survive the year without imploding. Granted, Aubrey's music choice had been questionable, but they had sounded good, and it was spontaneous, and it needed to happen again.

Thank God Cynthia Rose and Stacie had better musical choices... Beca begrudgingly allowed her fellow brunette the Boyz2Men song, because they were a little bit of a secret obsession of hers. Then Jesse, the goofball, more than serenaded her, feeding Aubrey's suspicions and all kinds of rumors in the tiny Bella rumor mill, so Beca stepped in.

She had to. Any longer, and her team would think the two of them were in love, and if Aubrey thought that, then she'd be kicked off the team, and then she'd never make it to L.A. next year.

Dr. Dre was rolling off her tongue before she even knew what was happening. She stood there, alone in front of the throngs of singers, and she was rapping, of all things, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Musical adrenaline was coursing through her veins. Nothing mattered but the music.

But why didn't the Bellas know Blackstreet? Beca whirled around, excited, but found no help from them, so she sucked it up and just continued. The show must go on, or something like that. Luckily for her, as soon as she started singing, the song clicked, and, slowly but surely, her backup finally arrived.

When everyone in the pool joined in, Beca could feel her cheeks starting to hurt from the grin that spread its way across her face. All the eyes focused on her, the energy... this was why she couldn't wait to be a high profile DJ. This was why she belonged in L.A.

She made her rounds, waving at the spectators and encouraging the other groups to sing, before coming back to her people. As she walked by a certain redhead, she caught a whiff of the girl's perfume, quickly followed by something coming into light contact with her ass. She knew that touch. Everything crashed back down to reality, and Beca, though still pumped full of adrenaline, couldn't remember the next verse. Now... now was a good time to end the song.

And for some reason, that had ended the night, even though they had been fantastic, but there was obvious bias there and there was little Beca could do. As Aubrey pulled them all away to berate them over their supposed failure, Beca found herself putting as much distance between Chloe and herself as possible. She couldn't think straight right now. She could barely think at all.

And judging from Cynthia Rose's knowing look, she'd be hearing about that at their next study session.

_TBC_

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_**A/N: **__I'm not entirely sure I got Beca right... Lemme know in the reviews? Also,____Chloe's POV next chapter. And, like, it'll be a while until then, because final paper season is approaching and I'm going to have to focus on that instead of this, sadly._


End file.
